


The Heat Death of the Universe

by Anonymous



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: Gen, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:51:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2275617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nasu Kinoko believes in truth and miracles. Urobuchi Gen disagrees. (RPF, fem!Nasu)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heat Death of the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't take this seriously. I'm just borrowing names and situations to tell a story.
> 
> This is written to read like a translation. Hope that isn't too off-putting.
> 
> Some of the dialogue is drawn from a bunch of interviews, and the author's notes on Fate/Zero.

* * *

 

" _I respectfully call him older brother, but have often unceremoniously ordered him to do this and that. In my opinion, however, compared to me, he has a particular innocence..."_

 —Nasu Kinoko

 

* * *

 

_"Wanna go see a movie together?"_

Looking down from the computer screen at his buzzing phone, Urobuchi Gen feels a certain apathy toward this ritual called 'social interaction'. Nobody ever says exactly what they are thinking, and especially in this industry, nobody makes a social call just like that.

And Nasu Kinoko is persistent.

Considering recent events, it is hardly difficult to tell what she is after.  Type-Moon is still relatively new to the VN scene, and between the ambitious scope of their latest project and their head writer in the hospital, they must already be struggling to meet deadlines.

So such subterfuge is, really, frivolous and unnecessary. But meaningless social exchanges are needed because they denote, after all, the willingness for cooperation.

So he texts back

_"I'll definitely do things that interest me."_

— he's always been good at choosing his words —

and returns to work on Kikokugai. 

Hours later, when the sun has gone down and he hasn't bothered to cross the room to turn on the lights so he can actually see what he's typing, his phone buzzes again. The screen lights up with a short message:  _"Nah, I was just kidding."_

Of course, Nasu and Takeuchi would have reasons for wanting to keep this project to themselves, instead of entrusting it to an outsider. But there is, almost, a stirring of disappointment.

To the creator of a work such as Tsukihime... he's not completely uninterested in talking to them. 

He decides to wait, and see where this will go.

Fate, the story of a boy who wants to become a hero of justice. 

 

* * *

 

It’s another two years before the subject comes up again, when he meets Nasu and Takeuchi for dinner and drinks in a bar on the quieter side of town. In that time Type-Moon had gone commercial with Fate/stay to resounding success, and these dinners had become semi-regular things—for them to talk shop about the VN scene and how their growing company is carving their niche into it. Nasu enthuses about Saya no Uta, and he asks about Fate/stay and how the sequel is shaping up.

When the silence next settles he excuses himself to the facilities; he returns to Nasu and Takeuchi exchanging words in low voices, then Takeuchi puts his cup down with a firmer than usual hand and turns around resolutely.

"Urobuchi-san, I've got something I want to talk to you about."

Ah, there it is. Nasu looks almost uncomfortable behind her patterned teacup.

And he’s waited long enough while they go about their deliberations. "Ah. If so, what about getting me to write about the fourth Heaven’s Feel? Something like Fate/zero.”

At his side, Nasu smiles — not the bright one with laughing eyes that she reveals when she's excited about something, but something small and satisfied, like he'd passed a test. Later, she'd tell him she was impressed with the way he could see where the conversation was going, and bring it all out into the open like that.

There’s a lot he could say in response, but she seems so genuinely in awe that he lets it slide. 

 

* * *

 

 _“If you put choices in a revenge tale, the revenge cycle crumbles…"_  

 

* * *

 

He goes through the notes Nasu sent him: neatly typed up is a description of the duel between Kotomine’s Bajiquan and Kiritsugu's Time Alter thaumaturgy, and pencilled in the margins and the blank space underneath are shorthand notes about Rider and Archer, and sketches of a terribly unbalanced conflict between a powerful, godlike Tohsaka Tokiomi and a prodigal Makiri heir.

His phone lights up. _“Ah, sorry it’s a mess— I can’t really do anything like this."_ And he thinks she’s gesturing at the hospital bed, even knowing he can’t see her. “Will give you the rest plus background materials when back at work, promise.”

So he types in the usual ‘get well soon’s and goes on perusing those sheets of paper.

He thinks, I can make something from this. 

 

* * *

 

Nasu texts him the address of a coffee place on the very edge of town. It’s not difficult to find, but when he gets there, she waves him over to a window table, where there is already a cup of tea and a small plate of fruit cake.

She nibbles at a forkful, then pushes the whole plate across the table. "You've got to try it."

He frowns at the cake.

“Something on your mind, Urobuchi-san?”

“I was thinking about how the cake-eating experience is so fleeting. For a few short seconds you taste it, then it’s gone, and all that’s left is the hole in your wallet.”

In response Nasu shoves the fork at him, too. "Back when  _Phantom of Inferno_  first came out, that was what I really admired about you, you know? I thought ‘This person observes the world and sees the truth about how hopeless, cruel and futile it is, and isn't afraid to say so’."

"I’m glad you enjoyed it. What I write isn't always what people want to read."

"Your fan-following would definitely say otherwise, Urobuchi-san. I know I would. But about this cake: it’s delicious. And I’m paying."

So he relents, because it’s also futile to keep refusing. And Nasu is right about one thing: it is good cake. 

 

* * *

 

Over many Saturday afternoon meetings they talk about many things: about visual novels, about Fate, and about creation.

"It’s what I think about every day since I was a small child,” he says, when she asks why he writes so much Lovecraftian horror. “It’s selfish, in a way. I want everybody to be as scared as I am. That very visceral reaction to monstrous and deformed things— I want people to remember that we’re not so different in the end. Just bags of blood and guts.” 

“Held together by moe bishoujo, yes,” Nasu hums. “Waiting to die or be ripped apart from the inside out by cosmic forces, because that is the only possible outcome… only you, Urobuchi Gen-sama.”

He’s gotten used, over time, to the almost unsettling imperturbability with which she discusses his work. On the other hand, he never stops being amazed by the world she created. The premise of seven heroic spirits battling against the backdrop of an epic magical history—he had asked, in wonder, ‘How do you come up with stories like this?’ and gotten the reply that ‘Haha, I just write things that fulfil people’s fantasies’.

“Anyway,” Nasu says with a bright smile, breaking his train of thought. “Zero. I only know two things. One is Saber, and her conflict with Gilgamesh and Iskander. Second, Kiritsugu’s story. Other than that, I don’t care. What do you think?”

"Well, then I'll write it the way I want it."

"Ah—" The implications aren't lost on her, of course.

"Though I'll try to keep it close to how Fate/stay was written." Gen doesn't believe in re-creation. "Otherwise your customers might be disappointed."

"Ah," she says again. "Thank you, that's very thoughtful—" Then, suddenly bright, "That's awesome! I can't wait to see it." 

 

* * *

 

_You're different from the public perception. Even though I knew you before, it's sometimes still hard to believe._

_oh?_  
 _i guess people will think what they think  
_ _but i've never pretended to be anything other than what i am_

_Well, you definitely don't seem like a just-graduated-from-university hardcore otaku who’s good at fantasy worldbuilding and also likes his moe a little too much._

_so you're saying i write h-scenes very, very well  
_ _hmm?_

Gen actually flushes, and he's glad she can't see.  _Sorry._

 _mm_ , she types back, and he thinks she's smiling.  
 _i don't mind  
_ _that's a compliment, really_

Then he closes out of the IM window, because 12:37am is early enough in the morning that he really needs to get back to writing. 

 

* * *

 

“So Rider, Archer and Saber are already accounted for. Kotomine will summon Assassin, of course. And I thought that Berserker could belong to Matou Kariya, whom we’ve already talked about—”

Nasu lowers her teacup. “Berserker— you’re going to make Kariya suffer and die miserably, aren’t you?”

“He is fighting for a wish that cannot be fulfilled.”

“Ah. But won’t you even consider an emotional payoff, in the form of a happy ending—”

“Truth be told, though you probably won’t believe it, I also want to write stories that are heartwarming. But even more, I need to write stories that are true. That’s why I have to do this.”

Precisely because the universe is unerringly getting colder, he cannot write happy endings. At the beginning, he had made an effort, but now he doesn’t have the energy to go against the natural order of things like that any more.

“Mm.” Nasu regards him over the rim of the teacup. “But reality isn’t cruel like that, Urobuchi-san. Not that it’s happy either, but it’s— boring. That’s why we as creators strive against that with our own ideals, isn’t it? Even these cruel twists of fate that make salvation impossible to obtain— they are your ideal, Urobuchi-san, aren’t they?”

Entropy, the shadow that devours the light at the end of the tunnel—  
That is his… ideal? 

In the past, philosophers had conceived of an ‘end of history’.  
A terminus of perfect order and awareness at which the entirety of humanity would one day arrive.  
But chaos and useless wars had made them change their mind.  
It gave them the cold realisation that all striving is blind.  
No matter how much they wanted things to be otherwise—  
There is no salvation. There is only entropy, and the physical law that cares nothing about so-called justice.  
The wishes of the forsaken cannot stop the heat death of the universe. It is inevitable. 

_Inevitable..._

While all this is going through his mind, across the table, Nasu waves a hand in front of his face. "Hey. Earth to Urobuchi-san."

"Ah, sorry—"

"It's all right. I know what it's like to get distracted. Cake?" 

 

* * *

 

" _About writing fantasy professionally, making something so personal open to the world to be bought and sold— the story can be felt sincerely, but it is also a transaction. Alternately: the story is a transaction, but it can also be felt sincerely..."_

 

* * *

 

He’s alternately free-writing on unlined paper and looking up things on the internet when the 'online' light beside the mushroom icon on his IM client flickers on.

Almost without thinking, he opens up a window and taps out a sentence.   _Kotomine promises Kariya to set up the showdown between him and Tokiomi… then leaves him with the dead body. What do you think?_

_it’s 1am, Urobuchi-san_

He checks the clock.  _That it is. Sorry. Again._

 _but anything for zero, yes?  
_ _it’s a good idea  
_ _an important step for Kotomine  
_ _turning away from the worldview he holds to be ‘right’ and starting to do what makes him entertained and happy  
_ _epic~~ as always, Urobuchi-sama  
_ _although you are being too cruel to poor Kariya-kun_  
 

_It was his fate from the start when he decided to take on the kind of burden that was participation in the Grail War. He is not determined—he is delusional. Not even you could see anything that can be saved from the reality of his situation._

_but he's fighting to protect something he loves! that should be enough for him to obtain a happy ending. in a just world—_

_The world is the world, and it isn’t just._

A pause.  _/Nasu Kinoko is typing/,_ then,  _no, i guess it isn't. but maybe it should be, hmm? there's enough terrible truths already, you know_

Something clicks in his mind.  _That’s right, Aoi should be there to witness it all, too._

 _...that is not what i meant..._  

 

* * *

 

In close to an hour, they haven't written anything, and the untended cup of coffee before him has long gone cold. He ignores it, instead looking over at Nasu who is going over the three pages from last week with a pencil, as if annotating would cause new words to appear out of thin air.

Something about the way she holds her hands on the table before her, almost like a defense, and the line of her shoulders— it betrays her exhaustion. Nasu’s said more than once that she would be more than happy to trust him entirely with something like this, because she's never liked writing about 'all the evil in the world'. But he insists that only she knows what really goes on in the Holy Grail— that she has to be there as he scripts every line of Kiritsugu’s final despair.  _The night is darkest…_

And as he describes the final iteration of the two-boat dilemma and Kiritsugu shooting Hisau Maiya through the head, Nasu finally slams down her teaspoon. Inside the cup resting on the saucer, the lukewarm liquid sloshes around uneasily.

“Urobuchi-san, this persistent theme of ‘rocks fall, everyone dies’— is it really so impossible for you to imagine an ending that isn’t completely unsatisfactory?"

“This is Angra Mainyu we’re talking about. It is only how things are. To believe anything else would be a denial of reality.”

"The reality, which you are creating. Wow, you really don't have much faith in the world, do you?"

And suddenly this isn’t about Emiya, not any more. There it is, the fulcrum on which his world turns. That despite hope, the truth cannot be denied - that even with the best intentions, the world falls slowly apart with every breath. The fear, not of chaos, but of the static that will eventually consume the universe.

"Not as long as entropy in the universe increases."

It’s not that Nasu doesn’t know about the way he thinks. She reads his work, she writes with him— he knows she knows what he believes. But he’s never said it so directly before. Like this— it’s like issuing a challenge.

Maybe this is what he was looking for, in the beginning, when he had thought that he just wanted to make a contact of this new VN writer who’d burst onto the scene. Maybe he had wanted all along to pick a fight with this self-professed ‘warrior of love’ to show the world the inescapability of a truth it refused to accept.

Or maybe—  
Maybe it is himself he wants to convince.

He isn’t looking, because that would be futile, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t waiting—  
For something that will reach through the unending abyss and show him something worth believing.

On the other side of the table, Nasu taps a finger unconsciously on the rim of her teacup.

"This thing called entropy... Do you remember high school biology, Urobuchi-san? The existence of 'life' is based on the presence of homeostatic and anabolic mechanisms, which work precisely against that condition."

He remembers. He remembers the realisation that the things that everybody says makes people human, like the capacity to think, to love, and to choose not to be afraid - was just mechanical, governed by physical law like everything else.

"For as long as life exists— but everything dies eventually. It is useless, in the end."

Decomposing bones that return to dust like the light of dying stars, expanding and growing colder forever beyond the boundaries of the known universe. Even the sun, that thing that gives warmth and life - in time it will grow red and consume the earth.

" _'Justice cannot save the world, it is useless'_  —" Nasu's voice is quiet, like she's talking to herself. "Yes, that is what Emiya Kiritsugu has known all along. But _right now_ , in that place— even though everybody he loves has died, he is still alive, isn’t he? And Maiya and Iri, that kind of choice— he made it precisely so he can realise something. That although the world cannot obtain salvation, he still lives on. Like the deaths of those who didn’t need to die—that is what carries him into the future.”

“The future of Fate.” And the Fifth War, ten years hence.

“The future that must happen, because it has already happened.”

In this place, around the two writers who meet each other's eyes every Saturday afternoon over tea and delicious cake, the world slows and comes to a halt.

In an instant there is something that can be saved, but in eternity there is only the void.  
Or—  
In eternity there is only the void, but in this instant there is something that can be saved.

Time slows, drawing one instant out into forever.

And the heat death of the universe— for this moment it slows, too.

 

* * *

 

The process called ‘evolution’ works like this:

  1. There are more organisms alive than the environment can support.
  2. Not all individuals can survive.
  3. There are variations in traits between individuals in a population.
  4. Some of those variations are more suitable to survival than others.
  5. Under environmental pressure, individuals with advantageous variations survive and reproduce better than individuals with disadvantageous variations.
  6. Over hundreds and thousands of generations, the advantageous trait becomes widespread in the population and evolution is said to have occurred.



Life does not strive to go on living because it wants to.

Life strives to go on living, the explanation for which being that it would already have ceased to exist, if it had stopped striving.

And until it stops striving, it will not cease to exist.

 

* * *

 

"Nasu-san, what do you think about re-creation?"

"Re-creation?"

"After a completed work is released, sometimes the creator will go back and continue the story, or a studio will adapt it to another medium."

"Oh. Hmm. So like you're doing with 'Zero'."

"Yeah. Do you think it is a good or bad thing?"

"Why would it be good? And why would it be bad?"

"It is good because it continues stories that were great, and brings joy to those who loved those stories and didn't want them to end. And bad because it is sometimes done for the sake of money with little regard for the true spirit of the original."

Nasu considers that. “There are a lot of stories out there that are written, not for money, but for the sake of that so-called ‘love’. It’s called doujinshi. It's also not very good.”

“That’s because it, too, like any other adaptation, is moving away from the original, complete form.”

She laughs. "You must really hate me, then."

"Nasu-san—?"

"When I wrote doujin, I never thought so much about 'authenticity' or 'being true to the spirit of the work' or anything like that. Even now, I just write stories that fulfilled my fantasies. And other people seem to like it, too. That’s enough for me.”

“I know. That’s why I told you, at the beginning, that I’d write this the way I wanted. Zero— is my ideal Fate.”

“To see what Zero has become over these two years, let it never be said that I have anything but admiration for it, Urobuchi-san. I still can’t believe the Fourth War is already almost concluded."

Then she brightens. “I’m still waiting to read how you end it—” 

 

* * *

 

_You can't save anyone._

In reality, someone like Matou Kariya would die most unsatisfactorily – he would be unable to think clearly or remember the purpose for any of it. Those he loved - they would have been suffering as he looked on, unable to do anything. And he would be alone, in pain, unremembered by anybody...

Black cursor on white page, spilling ink like blood across paper. Beneath his fingertips, Emiya Kiritsugu raises the gun to his wife's head and pulls the trigger. Somewhere far away, Kotomine Kirei is laughing.

And even so—  
Even as Fuyuki City burns and the Fourth War has ticked inevitably down to its 00:00:00—

Kiritsugu, with his Time Alter, fought for the years he wanted and could not have. Iri, and that isolated, unchanging life— it is all dead to him now, by his own hand. But there is still the rise and fall of Ilyasviel von Einzbern's breath in the snow-bound castle at the edge of the forest. 

Even though the world has ended in fire and the evil that has been unleashed upon the earth, something lives on.

Something lives on in a beautiful, beautiful dream.

 

* * *

 

Nasu adds her commentary to the finished manuscript and ships the whole thing off to printing before he can get there; tells him in a playful lilt that he gets to see what she's written at the same time as everybody else. So the first time he reads, in the back of a neatly bound volume, the uncertainties he told her in the expectation of confidence at 1am over instant messaging - it's at the press conference for the book release. 

Truth be told, he had alluded to much the same thing in his own comments, but to see it phrased in such a way...! 

He glances to his right, at Nasu with her floral-print dress and flat comfortable shoes and bright honest smile, and gestures helplessly at the offending page.

"You ruined my reputation with that sentence, Nasu-san— what will people think?"

"That you're adorable, of course." Then she turns back to the cameras with a smile. 

 

* * *

 

_"And I'm glad that I've dispelled, if only a little, the anguish in Urobuchi Gen's heart..."_

 

* * *

 


End file.
